First Finish - Feathers!

Feathers is my first quilt finish of 2014

I'm part of a very friendly and creative online sewing bee called Stars in Their Eyes. When I asked my hive-mates to make me two feathers using Anna Maria Horner's pattern, they all said it was a block they'd wanted to try, and they produced some gorgeous feathers! My instructions were to use fall colors, including purple and aqua and blue, and to use any gray for the background.

I realized, when I'd received all the blocks, that I could put them in an ombre arrangement, which is quite fashionable these days. You see hair, clothing, cakes, all sorts of things with a color gradation from dark to light. I made a few more blocks to complete the rows, and sewed them all together.

When I saw it all together, I knew I wasn't going to give it away as a gift, as I'd first thought, but I was going to keep it for myself! Then I started thinking, maybe I'd make it bigger, because it would look so good covering a bed. Should I make more feathers? I didn't really want to have more feathers made by me, and I wasn't patient enough to wait for my next turn in the bee to ask for more feathers made by my hive-mates. I auditioned some borders, but they detracted from the geometry and bold colors of the feathers.

I like our feathers better than these printed feathers.

It was one of those evenings when DH was out of town, and I was reveling in being able to stay in my sewing room, and I could set up the ping pong table in the garage to spray baste, that I stitched up the quilt back and put the layers together and marked my first few lines and started quilting it! Time to "git 'er done!"

Have I mentioned how much I really like
the crinkly texture a quilt gets when it's been washed?

I quilted chevrons: big, wide zig zags, another current fashion. (Because I'm so stylish like that... ha!) I really like how the quilting plays with the angles of the feathers, and how it crosses the lines where the background grays change from one tone to the next.

I realized after I'd started quilting it that I'd forgotten to sew the "siggy" blocks into the backing of the quilt. Each of my hive-mates had made a small block with their signature on it. As you can see in the photo, I trimmed them to circles and hand appliqued them to the soft, gray flannel back.

Thank you, Lisa, Sam, Sue, Becky, and Brandy!

The binding is in a text print, in reference to the online conversations that I enjoy so much with this bee.

Here's the big reveal!

If only my photography skills were better! 

Cozy and stylish in my family room.

Linking up with Lily's Quilts: Fresh Sewing Day

and with

I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins